This is our last gasp as a democracy. The state’s wholesale intrusion into our lives and obliteration of privacy are now facts. And the challenge to us—one of the final ones, I suspect—is to rise up in outrage and halt this seizure of our rights to liberty and free expression. If we do not do so we will see ourselves become a nation of captives.

The public debates about the government’s measures to prevent terrorism, the character assassination of Edward Snowden and his supporters, the assurances by the powerful that no one is abusing the massive collection and storage of our electronic communications miss the point. Any state that has the capacity to monitor all its citizenry, any state that has the ability to snuff out factual public debate through control of information, any state that has the tools to instantly shut down all dissent is totalitarian. Our corporate state may not use this power today. But it will use it if it feels threatened by a population made restive by its corruption, ineptitude and mounting repression. The moment a popular movement arises—and one will arise—that truly confronts our corporate masters, our venal system of total surveillance will be thrust into overdrive.

The most radical evil, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, is the political system that effectively crushes its marginalized and harassed opponents and, through fear and the obliteration of privacy, incapacitates everyone else. Our system of mass surveillance is the machine by which this radical evil will be activated. If we do not immediately dismantle the security and surveillance apparatus, there will be no investigative journalism or judicial oversight to address abuse of power. There will be no organized dissent. There will be no independent thought. Criticisms, however tepid, will be treated as acts of subversion. And the security apparatus will blanket the body politic like black mold until even the banal and ridiculous become concerns of national security.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is a federal law specifying the budget and expenditures of the United States Department of Defense (DOD). Each year's act also includes other provisions, some related to civil liberties.

The FY14 NDAA includes language that will make it easier to transfer detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, home or to third countries that agree to accept them. The language, however, prohibits the transfer of any detainee onto U.S. soil for any reason. The bill also does not include funds for building new, or upgrading old, facilities at Guantanamo—an acknowledgement that the facilities are temporary. The ACLU supports the language as a necessary but incomplete step for beginning to close the military prison for good.

The bill also includes important anti-discrimination protections for service members, including one that requires the DOD to submit a report to Congress that assesses whether its personnel policies for those living with HIV or Hepatitis B reflect an evidence-based, medically accurate understanding of both diseases. This review is welcome because service members have been penalized for behaviors and activities in which no transmission occurred or where there was no meaningful risk that transmission could occur. The FY2014 NDAA also repeals the prohibition on some expressions of private, consensual intimacy by military personnel – regardless of whether they are an opposite-sex or same-sex couple. With the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," this prohibition was stigmatizing and discriminatory.

In December 2011, President Obama signed the 2012 NDAA, codifying indefinite military detention without charge or trial into law for the first time in American history. The NDAA's dangerous detention provisions would authorize the president — and all future presidents — to order the military to pick up and indefinitely imprison people captured anywhere in the world, far from any battlefield. The ACLU will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally.

And there's other stuff, I just thought I would get the ball rolling._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

i'm not saying that what's going on with the nsa is good. i'm saying things have been bad before, and when people get angry about it, things change. we see them change even now, as dictatorships are overthrown.

so yeah, better to do something, and do it sooner than later - but i'm not quite willing to give up hope on the whole democracy thing yet.

what we _really_ need is proof that the government is investigating some big fox journalist. it would be a lot of fun, watching that fight._________________aka: neverscared!

i'm not saying that what's going on with the nsa is good. i'm saying things have been bad before, and when people get angry about it, things change. we see them change even now, as dictatorships are overthrown.

so yeah, better to do something, and do it sooner than later - but i'm not quite willing to give up hope on the whole democracy thing yet.

what we _really_ need is proof that the government is investigating some big fox journalist. it would be a lot of fun, watching that fight.

i'm not saying that what's going on with the nsa is good. i'm saying things have been bad before, and when people get angry about it, things change. we see them change even now, as dictatorships are overthrown.

so yeah, better to do something, and do it sooner than later - but i'm not quite willing to give up hope on the whole democracy thing yet.

what we _really_ need is proof that the government is investigating some big fox journalist. it would be a lot of fun, watching that fight.

The boiling frog effect is not actually a thing, though. At least not with frogs._________________"No, but evil is still being --Is having reason-- Being reasonable! Mousie understands? Is always being reason. Is punishing world for not being... Like in head. Is always reason. World should be different, is reason."
-Ed, from Digger

Joined: 30 Jan 2013Posts: 1106Location: Chamber of the House of Lords, Palace of Westminister

Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:49 pm Post subject:

Well by those standards, the water was just about always boiling, and the frogs still didn't bother jumping out. They would be more accurately described as jumping in._________________Good day, good people!